TV RAGE: JUST A FOOD FIGHT?

Robert Irvine, host of "Restaurant Impossible"

What does an innocent little cooking show have to do with violence against women?  On the surface, nothing.  But while watching the Food Channel’s Restaurant Impossible last night with a foodie-friend, it occurred to me, between the screams, crying and swearing, “yes Sirs!” and “I will do as you say,” that it has a lot to do with violence – not just against women, but anyone deemed weak or powerless.  

My friend says I’m being too serious—Why, he asks, do I always have to criticize these shows? Why can’t I just enjoy them? Well, I have been guilty of enjoying them, but not without a sick sense of shame and discomfort that I couldn’t always put my finger on. 

I worked as a television producer for over 15 years, for the likes of Discovery, TLC, HGTV-- the usual suspects—but luckily my producing days narrowly missed having to finally succumb to producing a hard-core reality show (perhaps with the exception of the Pet Psychic, yes, I am LOLing here!)  I don’t blame my friends who still work in the business for doing what they have to do to put food on the table; I certainly had a few really rough years as I made the career change full-time to behavior change communications consulting. In fact, and a bit ironically, I ate humble pie working events and catering.  

There is no doubt these shows are popular, hence, they SELL.  Part of the mechanics of “adding drama” to a reality show is adding conflict, and more and more, that means rage and violence.  This increasing dosage of anger for those jonesing for a fix can be had easily, with a simple trip to the TV Rage website to: “Please your thirst for more.”

This is precisely why I can’t enjoy these shows anymore, much less produce them.  Having had the opportunity to work in various regions of the world on gender-based violence prevention communication, I’ve come to understand that the link between media and entertainment and societal norms is crystal clear. What is propagated by the media and diffused through television, film, and social media has a direct affect on human behavior and what is viewed as “acceptable and normal” by society.  Gender equality and violence prevention experts worldwide have already recognized this, creating successful counter-media, sometimes called “Edu-tainment,” like the Soul City series in South Africa, or Promundo’s Project H in Brazil.  Similarly, social marketing campaigns work like advertising campaigns to promote healthy norms and behavior. But considering what they’re up against, predominantly from the Northern Hemisphere, one wonders if there needs to be “edu-tainment” produced for the producers of this seemingly innocent garbage.

In various cultural contexts, gender-based violence prevention communications can mean very different things.  In some places, the first step is just letting women, and men, know their rights: that is that they have rights, and they have a right to a safe and violence-free existence. In other places, there may be confusion by both women and men as to what constitutes violence.  In Chechnya, for instance, a study conducted in 2006 with focus groups of men and women, indicated that while men recognized physical abuse as violence, they did not recognize berating, yelling, or insulting a woman as violence. Nor did they view preventing a woman from leaving the house as something that constituted violence. The women, not surprisingly, had a different view, having been on the receiving end of the latter. 

Which brings me back to the connection between these programs and violence in the home here in America.  The protagonist of Restaurant Impossible, Robert Irving, is a brawny, pumped-up ex-military chef who comes in to save “desperate restaurateurs” from failure in 48 hours.  According to the premise of the series, this transformation requires a type of “tough love” that includes insulting, berating, and swearing at the owners and employees of the restaurant until they’ve seen the err in their ways, and make will make Daddy proud.  Often, this powerless restaurant owner or manager is a woman, brought to tears on camera, ending up in the arms of the host-thug and told something along the lines of: “I had to be harsh, I’m sorry but it will be worth the pain.”  Huh? Does this sound a little bit like a cycle of violence we’ve seen before? The problem with this little TV show and others like it is that this “reality” that is brought into American homes normalizes this behavior so that it’s not likely to be perceived as violence at all, and rewards both the perpetrator and the survivor (read ‘victim’ for the program) with glorious success in the end.  In other words, “Ah Robert, thank you, I really needed that punch in the face to tell me what’s what!”  The effects of this dynamic seem to have influenced even one of these 'chef-bully's' own families, with Gordon Ramsay, the host of Hell's Kitchen and Kitchen Nightmares wrapped up in a contentious law-suit over his off-screen behavior towards his father-in-law.

Alexandria Goddard, "Whistle-blogger"

Some might believe this is too far a stretch.  A simple cooking show can’t be that harmful.  But look at the bullying problem, which is exacerbated and fed by the power of social media and its influence on social norms.  Parents are frantically walking up a down-escalator trying to protect their children from the serious harm that both cyber and ‘live’ bullying can cause.  The Steubenville, Ohio rape case is a horrible and extreme example of just how far this problem has gone, but it’s also a hopeful example that at least in the non-fiction realm, there are more and more people who are using social media to call-out mainstream media in its lack of ethics and accountability for reporting on gender-based violence.  So, to end this post on a positive note, and also to reinforce a positive social norm, let’s promote and encourage the thousands of people who signed that online petition to hold CNN accountable for insensitive, gender-biased reporting, as well as cyber-heroes like Alexandria Goddard who provided key evidence for the prosecution in that case.